Saturday, August 25, 2007

Teddy Boys & Girls

According to Wikipedia, the primarily youth-based subculture refered to as The Teddy Boysstyles inspired by fashion during the Edwardian period. This movement was first reintroduced by Savile Row tailors after World War II. Edward was soon shortened to Ted which lead to the term "Teddy Boy", first coined by a Daily headline in 1953.

"The teddy girls left school at 14 or 15, worked in factories or offices, and spent their free time buying or making their trademark clothes – pencil skirts, rolled-up jeans, flat shoes, tailored jackets with velvet collars, coolie hats and long, elegant clutch bags. It was head-turning, fastidious dressing, taken from the fashion houses of the time, which had launched haute-couture clothing lines recalling the Edwardian era.



Soon the fashion had leapt across the class barrier, and young working-class men and women in London picked up the trend." {taken from When The Girls Came Out To Play by Susannah Price}

Along with those key items were short gloves, lace-up espadrilles, hobble skirts, and toreador pants.

The modern day interpretation of this movement looks like drainpipe pants, bomber jackets, and cowgirl boots.




{All images by April77}

4 comments:

Rose said...

this is how i dress when i miss NYC. I think it's a fairly utilitarian for "doing bad things like hopping fences or looking cute" way to dress day-to-day when one doesn't want to try and put together a fairy princess outfit [or my new experiment, chisnau street kid (sorta punky, sorta folky, sorta somethin else)].

well written article, lady.

sparrow said...

Yeah, I was thinking CBGB's, NYC meets Emo's, Austin in the 50's.

Danke <3

Anonymous said...

Makes me miss my pencil skirt that bit the dust last year at MUNSA... tear. I really liked the writing in this one, you've proved some journalistic chops.

Anonymous said...

You write very well.